Mobilities and Precarities: Navigating and Resisting Violence, Racialisation and Isolation

We live at a time when Anthropocentrism, neoliberalism and neo-colonialism, alongside wars, persecution and violence, are creating unsustainable modes of living and precarities that result in forced migration. At the end of 2024, the total number of people worldwide who were forced to flee their homes due to conflicts, violence, fear of persecution and human rights violations was 123.2 million, which was more than double the number a decade ago and the highest since World War II (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) 2025). The experiences of forced migration are exacerbated for individuals, groups and communities who are located at the intersection of marginal identities of race, class, caste, religion, gender, sexuality, ability, ethnicity or nationality.

In this contemporary global context, this Special Issue examines the complex intersections between mobility and precarity. It builds on existing scholarship in forced migration and refugee studies (Agier 2008; Loescher 2021; Betts and Collier 2017) and migration studies (Massey et al. 1993; de Haas [2010] 2018; de Haas et al. 2020) and demonstrates how mobility itself can be both a response to precarity and a source of new forms of insecurity (Stead 2021; Yeoh 2022; Ottosson 2020; Nishitani et al. 2023). Aligned with Schapendonk’s (2012, 2010) notion of turbulent trajectories and/or step-wise migration, our contributors offer innovative theoretical frameworks that challenge linear narratives of migration and reveal how precarious conditions shape, constrain and are transformed by various forms of human movement on the local, national and transnational scales. What distinguishes this Special Issue is its deliberate focus on the lived experiences of mobile subjects, featuring empirically rich qualitative research alongside critical policy analysis that centres the voices and agency of those navigating precarious mobility. This Special Issue representss an analytical commitment to understanding how structural inequalities are both reproduced and contested through mobile practices. It enables a more nuanced understanding of mobility–precarity nexuses that move beyond victimisation narratives to recognise the complex experiences, strategies, resistance and solidarity that emerge within and through precarious movement.

The articles in this Special Issue highlight issues emerging from the precarity faced by migrants and refugees across many different geographical contexts. Focusing on labour migration and human trafficking, Nimble et al. (2024, this Special Issue) draw attention to the conditions faced by labour migrants who may be subject to human trafficking. Their research is based in Andhra Pradesh in India, which is a major site for people seeking to move to urban areas and internationally, especially to Gulf countries. Findings from this large mixed-methods study are centre on the intersectional nature of vulnerability, and the authors discuss what they identify as a continuum from labour migration to trafficking for both work and commercial sexual exploitation. The authors foreground the ways in which notions of vulnerability are not static and are dependent on a person’s socio-cultural, political and economic contexts. Poor income status, lack of education, discriminatory socio-cultural practices and livelihood insecurity are among the common factors that contribute to the infrastructure of trafficking. While this article focusses on the vulnerability factors in the home country that lead to the trafficking and exploitation of labour migrants, the other three articles in this Special Issue focus on the experiences of migrants and refugees in their destination country. In this way, the articles draw attention to how the state in the home or destination country may either marginalise, make invisible or dominate the lives of people on the move and contribute to their precarities.

Border crossing identities represent the focus of Shahbazi (2024)’s article on Iranian migrants in the West and notions of belonging (2024, this Special Issue). Using a digital humanities method, Shahbazi draws on social media accounts that form social identities informed by experiences and emotions in migration systems. The ways in which migrants construct their own identities against racialised structures within and against the strictures of bureaucracy that contain their lives presents rich narratives of belonging and identity formation that are also dynamic and constantly in flux.

Identity and belonging are also central themes in the article by Mehta et al. (2025, this Special Issue). Drawing on the narratives of Hazara women refugees in Sydney, the article foregrounds their experiences of negotiating with the idea of ‘home’ and establishing social networks in a context of individual and structural barriers in Australia. Being torn between gratitude for their safety and security in Australia and the pain and guilt of leaving behind their loved ones in Afghanistan makes the experience of resettlement in Australia a vexed one for Hazara women. The final article in this Special Issue, by Openshaw et al. (2025) returns to earlier themes of identity and refugee experiences that act against racialised stereotypes that constrain wider notions of belonging. Openshaw, Atem and Phillips address the colonial settler state that led to the dispossession of First Nations people in Australia, the effects of which are felt to this day, and the ways in which migrant and refugee belonging is viewed restrictively, through a narrow lens determined by structures that reinforce patriarchal white sovereignty. They call for frameworks that up-end this structure and promote agency and self-determination in localised ways and for further research that interrogates this model.

The four articles foreground how neo-colonialism, capitalism and racism lead to interconnected forms of oppression that generate gendered continuums of violence, racialisation and isolation, contributing to the precarity faced by people who move across borders and boundaries—domestic or international. Shahbazi (2024) and Openshaw et al. (2025), in particular, refer to the racialised nature of borders, where white supremacy is camouflaged as sovereignty. This creates a context that requires migrants and refugees to negotiate with and navigate structures of migration and border regimes by showcasing their ‘deservingness’ of state support. The ‘deservingness’ is deemed to be dependent on how they adapt, assimilate and show gratitude, as well as fitting into the political narrative of the state. However, the articles also highlight how migrants and refugees resist and counter stereotypes, establish social connections and express forms of agency in the context of structural and institutional barriers. The narratives of the migrants and refugees indicate a need to facilitate self-determination and community-led approaches to address the intergenerational harm caused by states, migration structures and border regimes.

These articles leave us with some questions: How do we counter the processes of neo-colonialism, capitalism and racism that make migrants’ and refugees’ lives precarious? How do we account for migrants and refugees’ dreams, hopes and aspirations for a good life? How do we ensure social participation and community connectedness, economic wellbeing and freedom from exploitation, as well as autonomy, for migrants and refugees? We hope that this Special Issue stimulates these conversations.